Live-blogging from Christie's town hall in Manalapan

I'm at the Governor's town meeting in Manalapan. Again it's at a senior citizen complex with a golf course, just like in Jackson a few weeks ago.

The minimum age for this place is 55. I've been eligible for five years. Yikes!

When I was a kid growing up at the Shore we used to laugh at the old geezers. Now I am one.

Got my surfboard in the car and I intend to go for a surf afterward. That at least makes me feel young, except when I wipe out. Then I feel my age.

Christie came out to a round of applause He's talking about the way public employees get paid for their sick pay when they retire. In Jersey City, he says, property taxes went up $245 a year just to pay for unused sick pay. Parsippany paid $145.

He quips that the retirees call it their "boat check." They use the money to buy a boat.

He says it has to stop but the Legislature won't pass his reform bill.

The crowd's eating it up.

He goes on to say that what we should do instead is just have a big retirement party and the people in town can all drop buy and hand the guy a check instead.

The crowd loves it.

He's now going into his riff about pensions. He accurately blames a Republican-controlled Legislature for raising the pensions 9 percent back in 2001.

That can't be changed for current retirees but he wants to revoke that increase going forward.

In Manalapan, they'd save $8.3 million over 10 years with that reform. So that shows good research into local issues.

He blames Senate President Steve Sweeney for not passing that one either, and says it has to be done by June 30, the deadline for the new budget to be adopted.

Now he's going into the hundreds of authorities around the state. The Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission handles sewage for four counties. Under something called "commissioners rounds," every commissioner got to hire someone, a wife or niece of nephew or whatever.

This would go on and on and on.

He said he found the executive director was making $313,000. He wanted to veto the minutes and reverse his salary. But he didn't have the power. But when he kept talking about the guy, he retired anyway.